Thursday, February 23, 2012
Bill Cochran's Mailbag: Big day of turkey hunting for Little Hal
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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BILL: I was going back and reading some of your old stories and ran across one on Kit Shaffer, who was a legend when it came to turkey hunting. I must tell you this story as related to me by a good friend. His name was Hal Myers, III and his dad, Hal Myers, Jr., was a game biologist and friend of Kit’s.
As the story goes, Kit had called Hal Myers, Jr. and told him he was having some big wheel with the Game Department come up to turkey hunt and wanted Myers to take them somewhere in Amherst County where there were a lot of turkeys.
Hal’s son--everyone called him “Little Hal,”--was about 12 years old and had just started spring turkey hunting by going with his dad. Little Hal talked his dad into taking him along with Kit and this guy from Richmond.
Right after first light, they heard this ole gobbler as he was waking up all the hens in the area. He would answer the calls of Kit and Myers, but just wouldn’t come. This went on for a couple hours and all except Little Hal had fallen off to sleep.
Little Hal heard a faint rustle in the leaves and when he slowly turned his head that ole gobbler was in full strut about 20-yards away. Little Hal slowly reached over and got his dad’s gun and shot the gobbler.
Of course, the shot woke the others up and the first thing they saw was a big ole gobble flopping on the ground. As the story goes, Kit was not at all happy that the man from Richmond didn’t get to kill the turkey, but Hal Jr. told them that those that snooze lose. Little Hal grew up to become one of the best turkey hunters in these parts.
JOHN WRIGHT
Amherst
BILL: I am very pro-hound hunting and very anti-Virginia Hunting Dog Alliance. I’ve hunted with hounds nearly all my life. Nothing I wrote (see last week’s Cochran Mailbag for comments from Richard Sprinkle) was intended to be threatening in any fashion. I am sorry it was communicated that way. I never intended to threaten a lawsuit. I support every aspect of hunting strongly. I just have grown intolerant of the colluded actions of the hound and agriculture lobby.
In the very same legislative session that we see a restriction of Sunday hunting for a landowner or permitted guest on private property, we also see a push to have hound training liberalized on Sundays. Our government can’t remove one source of risk—Sunday hunting on private land with firearms—and liberalize another source of risk—hound training—without exposing itself to negligence.
TONY RUTHERFORD
COMMENTS WELCOME: xtrails@earthlink.net. Responses edited for space and clarity
